SIA conducts raids in Srinagar in connection with terror-funding case

State Investigation Agency (SIA) on Friday carried out simultaneous raids across Srinagar in connection with an alleged terror funding case.

Reports said the SIA sleuths accompanied by Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and local police raided multiple locations in Srinagar city.

According to a local news gathering agency KDC the residences of Fareeda Begum at Bulbul Bagh, Barzulla, two siblings Zubair Ahmad and Zuhaib Ahmad at Jawahar Nagar Wasim Magray and his brother Bashir Magray at Natipora were searched during the raids.

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Till evening the SIA didn’t issue any statement over the raids.

The SIA was constituted by the J&K government in November 2021 on the lines of National Investigation Agency (NIA) to handle high-profile terror cases in the Union Territory.

The CID Chief of J&K police heads the agency as its Director and the agency has powers to suo-moto register FIRs. For the last several years, high profile militancy and terror-funding cases in J&K were handed over to the NIA for probe.

According to a J&K Home department order the SIA will be a nodal agency for coordinating with the NIA and other central agencies.

The cases which can be handed over to the SIA or in which the agency will have powers to register FIR on its own include, Explosive Substances Act, Atomic Energy Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Anti-Hijacking Act, Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation Act, SAARC Convention Suppression of Terrorism Act, Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Maritime Navigation, Fixed Platforms on Continental Shelf Act and Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery System Act.

Besides, offences having linkage to terrorist acts, including terror financing and circulation of fake currency, narco-terror case, terror related kidnapping and murder cases, weapon snatching and terror-linked propaganda, false narrative large scale incitement and enmity against the Indian Union.